


Liminal Space

by decadent_mousse



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Ableism, Autistic Josh, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Self-Harm, Sensory Overload, accidental self-harm if that makes a difference, internalized ableism, meltdowns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-18 05:03:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9369182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decadent_mousse/pseuds/decadent_mousse
Summary: Josh has a bad day: the prequel.Josh (maybe) breaks his hand, Chris (understandably) freaks out about it, Josh actually opens up (!) about his problems.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prequel to [this fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6786067)! I want to thank everyone who read and left comments on that one, and the friends who encouraged me to write that one (and this one). It really means a lot to me!

Josh’s parents were throwing a party.  To be more specific, his _dad_ was throwing a party.  His mom was doing a lot of the actual party management, sure, but there was no doubt that Bob Washington, the famous movie director about to release his Next Big Hit, was the star of the show.  

He hated it.  It was the worst kind of party, full of a bunch of Hollywood execs that came across as a little too slimy and insincere to really enjoy being around -- a lot like his dad.  Even so, most days he could usually find a way to make things entertaining.  After all, Josh was nothing if not adaptable.  

It quickly became apparent, though, that today was not going to be one of those days.  The voices around him turned into an audible blur that was more noise than words his brain was actually capable of understanding.  The music too loud.   _Everything_ was too loud.  It felt like it was raking across his brain, setting his nerves on fire.  Too bright, too stressful, and clearly the only solution to any of it was to smash his hand against a wall on his way to the bathroom, really hard, several consecutive times.  

Wait.  No.

Too late.  His impulse control was always a little shaky, and today it was _a lot_ shaky.  He was doing it before he was even done thinking about doing it.    
  
He cursed under his breath and cradled his throbbing hand.  Luckily the walls in the Washington household were pretty sturdy and he hadn’t left so much as a scuff in the paint.  He wished he could say the same for his hand.  It fucking _hurt_ \-- pretty bad actually -- but after slowly wiggling each finger experimentally, he concluded nothing was broken.  Probably.  

Hopefully.

He bypassed the bathroom and went straight to his room after that.  This was not the kind of meltdown he was going to be able to wait out in front of the sink and splash a little cold water on.  

For as packed full of people as the house was, nobody had witnessed his showdown with the wall -- luckily for him.  He didn’t want to have to explain himself to one of his dad’s friends, and he definitely didn’t want his parents to find out.

Even safely nestled in his room upstairs with four walls and a door between him and the rest of the house, he could still feel the music under his feet and hear the ambient chatter downstairs.  He plopped down miserably onto his bed, squinting at his throbbing hand with a frown.

He let out a frustrated sigh.  He was usually a little better at coping with sensory overload in more productive ways, like crying in his room with his hands over his ears.  Which wasn’t exactly ideal either, but it sure as hell beat smashing his hand into a hard surface.  It was a good thing he'd only felt the urge to slam his hand into something and not his head, because God only knew what might've happened then.  
  
_Local Autistic Man Gives Himself A Concussion,_ his brain offered. 

_Funny, t_ _hanks_.  
  
Before he could weigh the pros and cons of sneaking downstairs to the kitchen to get some ice for his hand, his phone buzzed loudly on his nightstand.  He reached for it with a grimace before thinking twice and deciding to grab it with his _good_ hand instead -- smart, very smart.  Almost as smart as not hurting his hand in the first place.

It was a text, from Chris, inviting him to come over to his house to hang out.  

Josh jiggled his phone from hand to hand thoughtfully.  

Chris wasn't known for being quiet, but if Josh asked he'd tone down the noise levels and dim the lights or whatever else he needed.  He _wouldn’t_ ask -- he never did, that would mean _admitting_ it was a problem.  But whatever Chris had planned for the evening was almost guaranteed to be an improvement over his current situation.  

He grabbed his car keys.  
  
~  
  
In retrospect, he probably shouldn't have been driving in the throes of a meltdown.  A relatively low-key one, by his usual standards, but a meltdown nonetheless.  At one point he spaced out and nearly plowed into the back of another car, and he was pretty sure he'd accidentally ran at least one red light.  Hopefully none with a camera, because he’d have a real fun time trying to explain that one to his parents.

He made it to Chris’s house without getting himself killed, but he was on the fence about whether or not that was a good thing.  His skin felt like it was trying to crawl off his body while he piloted it from somewhere in orbit.

Chris's face lit up when he opened the door.  "Hey!"  
  
"Hey, bro," Josh enthused, with enthusiasm that was mostly genuine even if it took him ten seconds longer than usual to string the words together.  
  
If Chris noticed, he didn't say anything about it.  He knew Josh's communication skills weren't always great, even if he didn't know the reason -- or _reasons_ , actually, since Josh was a veritable fucking cornucopia of mental problems.  
  
As he walked through the door, Chris said, "You look kinda rough."  
  
"Thanks," Josh groused.  "Hey, it takes effort to look this devilishly sleep-deprived.”  
  
"Is everything okay?"  
  
He waved his hand dismissively.  "It's fine."

"What happened to your hand?!"

Oh, crap.  Right.   _That_ .  
  
Josh quickly dropped his hand and tried to glance down at it as nonchalantly as possible.  It was bruising, badly.  It made him wonder if he needed to re-evaluate the broken/not-broken status of his fingers.  He wiggled them again.  His ring finger, which was an especially impressive shade of purple already, hurt to move.  Not just a little bit, but a considerable amount, actually.  Shit.  
  
"Uh," he replied.  
  
Chris stared at him expectantly, visibly concerned.  
  
"I got into a fight."  
  
Which was true, technically, from a certain point of view.  Nobody needed to know he'd gotten into a fight with a wall.  Chris didn’t need to know.

“Are you okay?”

“You already asked me that.”

“Yeah, but that was _before_ I knew you’d gotten into a fight.  Now I’m, like, extra worried.”

“I’m fine, seriously.  It’s… nothing.  Honestly.  It looks way worse than it is.  You should see the other guy.”

“If I see the other guy, I’ll probably knock him out.”

Josh snorted.  “Really?”

“Well, I’d try to knock him out.”

“I appreciate the thought, man, really, but it’s not worth it.  No sense in us both getting busted up.”

Chris would do it, too.  He’d take on the non-existent person who had wrecked Josh’s hand and would probably get his ass kicked in the attempt.  He wasn’t exactly built for conflict and this imaginary attacker looked really burly in Josh’s mind.

~

It turned out that Chris’s plans weren’t anything more grandiose than hanging out up in his room and playing video games for a few hours.  As luck would have it, that was exactly the kind of distraction Josh needed -- something to focus his attention on.  If he was careful, he could manage the controller without aggravating his hand, and if he was concentrating on kicking Chris’s ass at Mario Kart, it’d make tuning out everything else a little easier.  

That was the hope, anyway.  Waluigi kept making noises that almost physically pained him.

“How’s your hand?”

"It-- yeah."  Well that had been eloquent.  He tried again.  "It just-- kinda hurts.  It's fine."  It wasn't a lie, just a really selective truth -- Chris had asked about his _hand_ not his overall psychological well-being.  
  
Chris looked skeptical, but he let it go.  Sometimes he was too patient for his own good.  Sam would have grilled him the second she'd seen his jacked up hand.  And he probably would have sang like a canary, too -- Sam could be pretty intimidating when she put her mind to it.  
  
They played Mario Kart until his hand legitimately started bothering him too much to keep playing effectively and Chris decreed it movie time.  Josh nodded and uh huh'd to Chris's movie suggestions just enough to roughly mime appropriate responses, or so he thought until he caught Chris looking at him weird.  
  
"What?  What is it?"  
  
"You really want to watch Pretty Woman?"  
  
Josh stared at him.  Chris stared back.  Shit.  He was not a huge fan of romantic comedies, especially old ones, and he had literally _no_ desire whatsoever to watch Pretty Woman, but he couldn’t admit to that without also admitting that he hadn’t really been processing what Chris was saying in the first place.  And then he’d have to try to explain why.

So instead…  "Yes," he said slowly.  "I do."  
  
"Alright," Chris sighed dramatically, giving him a knowing look.  "Suit yourself."  
  
Josh took back everything he'd ever said about how kind and compassionate Chris was -- he was Satan incarnate.  
  
~

“So…” Chris said, after Pretty Woman ended and the credits began to roll.  “Are you gonna tell me what _really_ happened to your hand?”  
  
"How'd you know I wasn't in a fight?"  
  
He gently took Josh’s hand, and Josh ignored the way his stomach tried to defy gravity at the contact.  
  
"Your hand's the only thing busted.  If you'd gotten in a fight, there's no way you wouldn't have taken a few hits."  He paused.  "No offense."  
  
"None taken.  Maybe I didn’t get hit in the face.  Maybe I have _hidden_ wounds.”

“Maybe,” Chris mused, “but I don't think so.”

Josh frowned.  Chris was _vastly_ underestimating his ability to hide things.

“You don't have to tell me what happened," Chris said softly.  "But are you okay?  Really?"  
  
"Yeah, bro.  I wasn't, but-- I… am.  Or-- I will be.  I guess."

“Okay.  That’s kinda vague, but I’ll take it.”  He gestured at Josh’s hand.  "Is your finger broken?"  
  
"I don't know," he admitted.  "Maybe.  Wouldn't it hurt worse?"  
  
"Well, you tell me.  I mean, how much does it hurt?"  
  
"It's not unbearable or anything.  Kind of throbbing."  Then again, he wasn't sure how well he could trust his brain's pain signals at the moment.  
  
Chris let go of his hand, and he tried not to feel disappointed.  Unfortunately, he wasn’t nearly as good at not feeling things as he was at pretending not to feel them.  

"Probably not broken, but I dunno.  You should put ice on it or something."  
  
"I was about to when you texted me."

“And you came over instead of taking care of your _hand_?”  Josh shrugged and Chris sighed.  He put down the tv remote and stood.  "Come on."

He headed for the kitchen, and Josh followed.  He had the hysterical urge to go bolting out the front door and out of the house, because that would literally have been easier than having to explain or try to explain what was going on.  He didn’t, but the desire was strong.  His backup plan was letting the floor swallow him before they reached the kitchen, but that didn’t happen either.  Today just wasn’t his day.  
  
"Bet this isn't what you had in mind when you invited me over,” he said as Chris rooted around in his freezer for the fabled ice of myth and legend.  
  
"It isn't," Chris said.  "But come on, bro.  I'm glad you came over."  
  
"So am I.  I was kinda, uh, stressing out at home.”

“Obviously.”  Chris walked over with a small bag of ice wrapped in a towel and sat down beside him.  “Here, give me your hand.”

Josh held out his hand awkwardly, wincing when the ice made contact, even with the towel in between.  He felt like saying, _You don’t have to do this.  I can ice my own hand._ The words wouldn’t come out, though, so he just ended up sitting there like an idiot while his best friend cradled his hand between his and pressed a bag of ice against it.  

“I hit a wall,” Josh said finally.

Chris blinked at him.  “What?”

“I hit a wall,” he repeated, looking down at his hand, which had the added effect of looking down at Chris’s hands.  There were, in general, a lot of hands involved in avoiding eye contact which wasn't exactly making the situation less awkward.  “That’s how I hurt my hand.”

“Why-- why would you even do that?”

He shrugged, eyes stinging, and Chris sighed.

“Dude, how hard did you hit it to tear up your hand this bad?  I’m… really not totally convinced that it isn’t broken.”

“It isn’t.  I-- don’t think it is.”

“Well, _that’s_ reassuring, Josh.”

Josh glared up at him, but whatever retort his brain was reaching for died before it even reached his lips, because Chris didn’t look judgmental or pissed off, just worried.  

“Did something happen?  At home?  I mean, besides you hitting a wall?”

“I thought I didn’t have to talk about it.”

“You-- you don’t _have_ to.  I just-- if you wanted to… you could.”

“Uh.  Could we go back to your room?”

“Okay,” he said softly.  “Here, take the ice.”

Josh took the ice.  His hand was going a little numb, but he figured that was an improvement at this point.

They watched more TV, played more games -- though the latter was a little tricky for Josh while also balancing a bag of ice on his hand.  He thought about telling Chris.  Not just about his meltdown, but _why_ he had it.  It wasn’t the first time he’d thought about throwing it out there.  He had no real reason to _not_ tell him.  Chris was his best friend, he would probably be cool.  But… Josh couldn’t stop thinking about how his parents had reacted, the day he’d been diagnosed -- how disappointed they’d been, how they’d treated him differently afterward, how they still did years after that and probably always would.

Even if the odds of Chris reacting that way were small, just the thought that he _might_ made Josh feel sick.  That wasn’t something he could un-reveal if it didn’t go over well.  Once it was out there, it would be out there, forever.  
  
"Umm,” he began.  
  
Chris waited patiently for him to say something else, and if Josh wanted to backpedal out of what he was about to say, Chris would probably let him.  If he just trailed off into nothing and they just unpaused the game and kept playing, Chris wouldn’t pester him about it.  He could absolutely be one of the nosiest people on the face of the earth sometimes, but when it came to the stuff that mattered, he knew when to let some things go.  

That was something Josh had always loved about him.  
  
"I'm autistic."    
  
"Oh."  
  
"Oh?"  
  
"Well… that explains a lot."  
  
Josh stared at him, trying to decide how he was supposed to take that.  "Explains a lot how?" he asked, carefully.  
  
"Not in a bad way or anything.  I just...  There are times I can tell something bothers you, or you get really quiet, and I'm not always sure what the problem is.  And back when we first started hanging out, you hardly talked, like, at all.  And now, looking back on it, some of those things kind of make more sense, you know?"  
  
He did know, because he'd felt the same way when he'd found out.  All the Weird Kid (TM) behavior explained.  His indignation fizzled before it even really got off the ground.  There were a million insulting ways a person could've reacted badly to that information and Chris hadn't, because of course he hadn’t.  He felt bad for thinking that he would.  
  
He teared up, a little bit.  Emotions were a pain in the ass.  This whole thing was a pain in the ass.  
  
"Hey, I'm sorry."  
  
Josh shook his head.  "You didn't do anything wrong.  I'm just-- I'm kinda fucked up."  
  
"You aren't."  
  
"I hit a wall, bro."  
  
"Plenty of people hit walls!  Mike would probably do it for a twenty.”

“I did it for free.”

"Why?"  
  
"It made things feel less loud."  
  
Chris blinked at him.  "Did it… help?"  
  
"Kinda."  
  
"Are there other things that help?  Preferably ones that don't involve breaking your hand or-- or _almost_ breaking your hand?"  
  
"Maybe, but the wall was right _there_.  What do you take me for?  Some kind of maker of good decisions?"

“You didn’t have to hide this from me, you know,” Chris said softly.  “I always would have been cool with it.  You know that, right?”

Josh poked at his throbbing finger experimentally.  “I wasn’t _hiding_ it, exactly.  I just… didn’t tell you.  Wasn’t really sure how to bring it up.  I’m not great at this.”

“Stop poking it.  What do you mean ‘this?’”

“I’m not poking it. _This_.  Talking about serious shit.  Opening up to people.  Communicating.  Functioning like a normal fucking person.”  He couldn’t quite keep the bitterness out of his voice.  

“You’re literally poking it _right now_.”  Chris reached over and gently swatted Josh’s hand away from his bruised, possibly fractured hand and pressed it flat to the couch to keep him from doing it again.  It was deceptively close to hand-holding.  “I think you function pretty okay.”

“Obviously not okay enough.”

“What’s that even mean, Josh?  What would ‘okay enough’ be?”

He shrugged.

Chris scooped up his hand, squeezing it very gently, and at that point there really was no getting around the fact that he was holding Josh’s hand because he was, he was literally holding Josh’s hand.  “You are who you are.  And I happen to _like_ who you are.” 

“Oh.”

“Oh,” Chris echoed, with a laugh.  “Okay, so, now that that’s settled, should I take you to the ER or…?”

Josh wiggled his finger again.  It still hurt like a son of a bitch.  Damn it.  However, Josh Washington was nothing if not stubborn. 

“I… really think it’s fine.”

“I really think you’re full of shit.”  Chris hummed thoughtfully and dropped Josh’s hand to dig around in the pocket of his sweatshirt.

“Now what are you doing?”

“I’m going to take a picture, send it to Sam, and see if _she_ thinks it’s broken, and if she does, I’m taking you to the hospital so you don’t get some weird infection in your finger bone and end up having to have your hand amputated.”

“That-- doesn’t happen,” Josh protested uncertainly.  

Chris stared at him until he finally relented with a sigh and raised his hand, tilting it so Chris could get a good view of it with his phone’s camera.

~

He spent the night at Chris’s house, curled up under the covers on his bed.  Once his meltdown had ran its course, it felt like the coil of stress inside him had finally sprung loose, and after all that he was exhausted.  He had exactly zero energy left; he just felt sort of loose and boneless.  It was actually a nice feeling in comparison to how tense he’d been the rest of the day.

Sam had declared his hand probably-not-broken, but had told him to go to a doctor in a couple days if it didn’t show signs of improvement.  Her tone over the phone had been concerned and vaguely threatening, with the unspoken promise to physically come to Chris’s house to drag Josh to the hospital herself if he didn’t agree, so he had.  If nothing else, that bought him time to buy a plane ticket out of the country and he’d be long gone before Sam realized she’d been duped.

He heard the bathroom door creak shut, and felt the mattress dip as Chris slipped into bed beside him.  

“Thanks for letting me stay, man,” Josh murmured from inside his nest of blankets.  

Chris had dug a couple extra ones out of the hall closet especially for him, and as embarrassed as he was about this whole thing, deep down he thrilled a bit at the extra attention.  When he had a meltdown at home, his parents just sort of looked at him like he was crazy and told him to go to his room.  If it was really bad, his mom would sometimes come check on him later, but there was none of this extra blankets and tender touches shit.  

He liked it.  

Chris was a good friend.  In retrospect he felt silly for doubting him.  It was probably a sign that he needed to have more faith in people.  Or at the very least a little more faith in his friends.

“Hey, you know you can always stay here whenever.  Did you let your parents know?”

“I texted Beth earlier.”

He’d told her what happened, and to tell their parents a parent-friendly version of events that wouldn’t get him yelled at for almost wrecking his car and disappearing all day without a word.  He trusted her to handle it.  He hadn’t really had the energy to deal with his parents himself, and Beth had this way of gently delivering news to their parents.  He wasn’t exactly sure how she did it.  One time she’d managed to tell them she’d gotten into a fender bender without them taking her to the basement and ritually disemboweling her _and_ she’d only gotten grounded for a week.  He hadn’t completely ruled out the possibility of mind control, there.

He scooted towards the middle of the bed, sheets rustling around him, and stopped when he gently bumped into resistance.  Chris rolled towards him and gently patted his arm.  Josh leaned his head against his shoulder.  He was less embarrassed about craving the contact now that they were in bed.  Snuggling was way more dignified than finding excuses to hold hands and you could only hug a person so many times before it got a little weird.  
  
His hand still hurt, but he'd worry about explaining broken fingers to his parents in the morning.  
  
For now things were quiet and calm, and he was okay, or at least pretty close to it.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by real life events! Only I can safely 100% for sure say I didn't break my hand, but it sure hurt like a... really painful thing. 
> 
> I was on the fence about actually mentioning this, but I didn't want anyone to think that I was deliberately portraying autism in a negative light or was That Person who thinks all neurodivergent people are inherently violent or any of the things neurotypical people sometimes (intentionally or not) do when they write about this stuff. While I often do write about some of the more unpleasant aspects of being autistic when I write about it, it's often because it makes me feel better about my own not-so-great days. So this has been... a PSA?


End file.
